Printer Support
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</imagemap>Overview
In the developing world, paper is a precious resource, so children store their work on their laptops rather than print it out.
However, there may be some use cases where a printer is available, and may be useful to print activities on paper.
The XO laptop can only connect to a printer via USB cable or over the network. Check your printer to see if it supports either of these two options. For most classroom settings, a network printer is probably the best option.
The XO runs a modified version of Red Hat's Fedora 7, so we need to also determine if the printer is supported on Linux. Check the Open Printing Database for the level of support. This database has come up with the following ranking system. Printers are categorized according to how well they work under Linux and Unix. The ratings do not pertain to whether or not the printer will be auto-recognized or auto-configured, but merely to the highest level of functionality achieved.
- Perfectly
- Everything the printer can do is working also under Linux
- Mostly
- Works almost perfectly - enhanced resolution modes may be missing, or the color is a bit off, but nothing that would make the printouts not useful
- Partially
- Mostly don't work; you may be able to print only in black and white on a color printer, or the printouts look horrible
- Paperweight
- These printers don't work at all. They may work in the future, but don't count on it
If your printer only supports a parallel cable connection, or does not have a high enough ranking above, you may need to obtain a different printer. The Linux Foundation website offers a list of suggested printers and tutorials.
Print using another device
Documents can be saved to a USB drive or SD card and printed from another computer. The general steps involved are:
- In an activity like Word, select the Keep button
- Use Alt-1 to capture the screen itself as an image: hold Alt key down then press "1" (one) key.
- Go to Journal activity, you will find the document there
- Mount the USB drive or SD card, it will appear at the bottom as a unique icon
- Move the cursor to the document you wish to save, hold down the mouse button and
drag the document to the USB drive icon at the bottom
- Unmount the USB drive or SD card, position cursor over icon and select UNMOUNT
The USB drive or SD card can now be taken to another computer that can print the document.
Some printers have direct support to print documents from USB drives or SD cards.
CUPS
Software to enable printing will be added sometime in 2008 with a software upgrade that supports the standard CUPS / IPP protocols.
You can add network printing yourself, in the meantime, if you are in a real pinch and somewhat technically inclined.